“FAVOURABLE” DISCUSSION WITH TEN MPs
Support A1+!Today before the National Assembly of Armenia passed to its routine activities NA Speaker Tigran Torossian congratulated Vahan Hovhannissian on the election of ARF Dashnaktsutiun Leader and Heghine Bisharian on the election of OYK Leader.
Afterwards Tigran Torossian presented the draft law to the amended Law on “Meetings, demonstrations, marches and rallies.”
Reminder: the law was last amended on March 17, 2008. The Armenian parliamentarians haven’t got familiarized with the conclusions of the Venice Commission yet. Tigran Torossian said that they can read the whole text on the Internet website in an English version.
Asked whether the NA has followed the recommendations and whether the amendments meet their requirements, the NA Speaker said, “The legislative initiative stems from the provisions of the memorandum.”
The draft law allows holding spontaneous meetings with certain time limitation. The ban on mass meetings can be appealed in the court. A spontaneous meeting can last no longer than six hours. The next meeting on the same matter will not be considered as spontaneous and can be held after submitting a notification to the City Hall.
The authorized body is entitled to reject the notification if he has “grounded official information” about forthcoming mass disorders and so on.
There were about ten MPs in the National Assembly during the discussion of the draft law. Most of them were Zharangutiun parliamentarians. The draft law will likely be passed tomorrow after a “favourable” discussion. Naturally only Zharangutiun MPs and nonpartisan deputy Victor Dallakian complained of its shortcomings.
